Sea ice extent in the Arctic fell to 483,000 square km (186,000 square miles) on August 13, a new record

The Arctic Ocean is feeling hot, hot, hot, says new report released by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

According to the report, sea ice extent in the Arctic dropped to a record low on August 13, and will continue dropping to new record lows by the end of the month.

Sea ice extent, which measures the amount of sea ice remaining in the ocean, fell to 483,000 square km (186,000 square miles) on August 13. This was a dip from the previous record low on the same date back in 2007.

But that's not the end of it. The Arctic sea ice is expected to continue melting through mid to late September, but more record lows have been predicted for the end of this month.

"A new daily record would be likely by the end of August," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. "Chances are it will cross the previous record while we are still in ice retreat."

The news of a new record hasn't surprised many among the environmental community. This may be because the Arctic neared record lows last year, according to climate physics Professor Seymour Laxon from University College London. It almost seemed inevitable that this would happen at some point. "Rapid" melting occurred in June of this year as well with 100,000 square km melting daily.

However, Laxon worries that this rate of melting will adjust the prediction for an ice-free Arctic in summer. Previous reports estimated that the Arctic will have an ice-free summer in 2100 based on melting at that time, but when the 2007 low hit, this estimate was brought to the 2030-2040 range. Scientists are now concerned that this year's lows will bring that date even closer, which is problematic because the melting of sea ice means warming of the oceans. Sea ice keeps the Earth's temperature controlled.

Global warming always seems to be a hot topic (pun intended). A recent controversial report released by James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed that global warming has caused hotter summers since 1980, but many question the merit of his opinions based on his position on climate change.

The data sets you're talking about have no real bearing determining causal relationships in the last century. To make an analogy, if I had a NO2/N2O4 system in a balloon, and put that balloon in chamber that lets me change it's pressure, the fraction that is N2O4 changes goes up with higher pressure (and indeed it will lag the pressure change). Now, if I had a tube going into the balloon and injected N2O4 in it, would you deny that the balloon's pressure increase was due to the N2O4 addition (since causality was the other way in the chamber experiment)? Of course not!

In fact, that data supports the notion of a positive feedback factor: as the CO2 injection heats up the earth, you an additional amount of CO2 from the oceans. It's not enough to cause instability/runaway, but it's enough to create a gain. Same with water vapor, as you likely know from Clausius-Clapeyron. The fallacy among AGW-skeptics that more evaporation leads to more clouds also flies in the face of this law: the higher evaporation occurs precisely because the warmer air will hold more water, and needs more before precipitating.

Indisputable evidence for AGW is an impossible standard, because we don't have another earth that we can play with, and the time scales are too long. Using that as a basis to deny AGW is the same M.O. as evolution denialists. We'll never, ever see first hand evidence that a species can, through variation, randomly develop the genetic code from scratch to produce an eyeball. Is that a good basis to deny that it happened?

Take a look at the Foster-Rahmstoff study:http://www.skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmsto...Can you think of any other earth based phenomena in modern history where mankind has been so clueless that decades of study didn't even put the correct hypothesis on the radar?